Eunice Fajobi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Eunice Fajobi
This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the influence of Yoruba prosody on the prod... more This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the influence of Yoruba prosody on the production of Nigerian English (NE) intonation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Studies in English Language Teaching, 2022
The concept of given and new information is innate to discourse intonation. The concept expounds ... more The concept of given and new information is innate to discourse intonation. The concept expounds on the idea that intonation is used to regulate conversational behaviour of interlocutors by ensuring that a listener pays attention to those important aspects of the message being passed across by a speaker. Thus, the listener’s interpretation of the encoded message is pivoted on the F0 direction whose trajectory may be falling or rising in tune. The rising tune signals given or shared information while the falling tune is reserved for what constitutes a new information between the participants. Dwelling on Brazil’s (1997) and Chun’s (2002) Discourse Intonation (DI) model and using Praat for the acoustic analysis in this study, we extract data from the natural speech of 10 speakers of Warri sub-variety of Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) to investigate and describe the patterns of intonation used in the variety to convey given and new information in selected “wh-” and “yes/no” interrogativ...
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies
This paper examines the influence of ethnicity on the realization of the English fricatives artic... more This paper examines the influence of ethnicity on the realization of the English fricatives articulated by selected educated speakers of English from four ethnic groups of Ebira, Igala, Hausa and Okun-Yoruba residing in Lokoja, a North-Central city of Nigeria. Data for the study consist of 1080 tokens elicited from 120 informants. Guided by a synthesis of the theoretical frameworks of Honey’s (1997) Sociophonology and Azevedo’s (1981) Contrastive Phonology, perceptual and acoustic analyses of the data reveal that, although speakers have a tendency to not articulate sounds absent in their phonemic inventory with the dexterity expected of their level of education, co-habitation seems a factor that has robbed off on the speakers’ level of performance in this study: 80% overcame their linguistic challenges to correctly articulate the test items while 30% generally found it difficult to articulate the interdental fricatives /P/ and /D/ and the voiced palato-alveolar fricative /Z/; perhap...
In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few deca... more In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few decades, tone is the only prosodic feature in Yoruba that has received considerable attention in the field of linguistic research. Intonation, on the other hand, has suffered a near-neglect. All there is to be flagged up in the existing literature on the intonational system of the language are mutual effects of tones on each other. But there is more to Yoruba intonation than such effects. Recent approaches do not facilitate any comparison of Yoruba intonation with that of non-tone languages. The present investigation seeks to give a more sophisticated account of Yoruba intonation. Drawing on universal traits of intonation across languages, I report, in this paper, some of the new findings of a new elicitation study on the nature of Yoruba intonation. Acoustic analysis of the Fo patterns in some spoken Yoruba sentences in the following categories: declarative and three types of interrogative ...
Studies in English Language Teaching
A number of studies on Nigerian English intonation, of which sentence stress is a part, reveal th... more A number of studies on Nigerian English intonation, of which sentence stress is a part, reveal that Nigerian English is devoid of accentuation; it is generally spoken with tone. Even at that, none of these studies has analyzed how teachers of English in Nigeria articulate or utilize sentence stress in speech, whether consciously or unconsciously. This present study focuses, therefore, on the performance of secondary school English teachers in the use of sentence stress for effective communication. Analysis of 24 (12 short and 12 long) elicited English sentences uttered by 32 secondary school English teachers in Lagos State of Nigeria reveal a performance of only 27% correct accentuation and 73% incorrect accentuation. The study concludes that secondary school teachers of English in Nigeria have not adequately mastered the art of accenting the right words in sentences to accurately generate the intended meaning. Finally, the study recommends that intensive trainings be organized for ...
English Language and Literature Studies
Personal names, in African context, are not arbitrary. They are like signposts that convey a wide... more Personal names, in African context, are not arbitrary. They are like signposts that convey a wide range of invaluable information about the bearers. Also, they are like a ‘social DNA’ that discloses the identity, family background, family history, family vocation and family deity of the bearer (Onadipe, 2012). Sadly however, studies, which are mostly sociolinguistic in perspective, abound to show that some of these given personal names are being anglicized among the younger generation of bearers (Soneye, 2008; Faleye & Adegoju, 2012; Raheem, 2013; Filani & Melefa, 2014). From the standpoint of socio-phonology and using Knobelauch’s (2008) Phonological Awareness as our theoretical framework, this paper investigates the phonological changes that Yoruba personal names undergo when they are anglicized; and their implication for the endangerment of Yoruba language. Perceptual and acoustic analyses of the data sourced from the written and verbalized (as well as recorded)...
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
This paper is an investigation of the pronunciation patterns of English interdental fricatives by... more This paper is an investigation of the pronunciation patterns of English interdental fricatives by some Yoruba speakers of English at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. This was with a view to finding out the extent to which gender, the level of education, and the position in words of the interdental fricatives (i.e., the (th) variable as in think, pathetic, and path on the one hand, and the (dh) variable as in then, father, and clothe on the other hand) could affect the realisations of these two fricatives, otherwise known as (th) and (dh) variables. Data eventually used for this study were drawn from the reading performance of thirty-three informants who were of Yoruba origin. The thirty-three informants comprised 20 male and 13 female subjects with different levels of education ranging from undergraduate to doctoral. Our findings indicated that the (dh) variable was significantly affected by gender while the (th) variable was not. It was also demonstrated that while the (t...
In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few deca... more In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few decades, tone 1 is the only prosodic feature in Yoruba that has received considerable attention in the field of linguistic research. Intonation2, on the other hand, has suffered a near-neglect. All there is to be flagged up in the existing literature on the
This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the influence of Yoruba prosody on the prod... more This thesis provides an experimental investigation of the influence of Yoruba prosody on the production of Nigerian English (NE) intonation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
Studies in English Language Teaching, 2022
The concept of given and new information is innate to discourse intonation. The concept expounds ... more The concept of given and new information is innate to discourse intonation. The concept expounds on the idea that intonation is used to regulate conversational behaviour of interlocutors by ensuring that a listener pays attention to those important aspects of the message being passed across by a speaker. Thus, the listener’s interpretation of the encoded message is pivoted on the F0 direction whose trajectory may be falling or rising in tune. The rising tune signals given or shared information while the falling tune is reserved for what constitutes a new information between the participants. Dwelling on Brazil’s (1997) and Chun’s (2002) Discourse Intonation (DI) model and using Praat for the acoustic analysis in this study, we extract data from the natural speech of 10 speakers of Warri sub-variety of Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) to investigate and describe the patterns of intonation used in the variety to convey given and new information in selected “wh-” and “yes/no” interrogativ...
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies
This paper examines the influence of ethnicity on the realization of the English fricatives artic... more This paper examines the influence of ethnicity on the realization of the English fricatives articulated by selected educated speakers of English from four ethnic groups of Ebira, Igala, Hausa and Okun-Yoruba residing in Lokoja, a North-Central city of Nigeria. Data for the study consist of 1080 tokens elicited from 120 informants. Guided by a synthesis of the theoretical frameworks of Honey’s (1997) Sociophonology and Azevedo’s (1981) Contrastive Phonology, perceptual and acoustic analyses of the data reveal that, although speakers have a tendency to not articulate sounds absent in their phonemic inventory with the dexterity expected of their level of education, co-habitation seems a factor that has robbed off on the speakers’ level of performance in this study: 80% overcame their linguistic challenges to correctly articulate the test items while 30% generally found it difficult to articulate the interdental fricatives /P/ and /D/ and the voiced palato-alveolar fricative /Z/; perhap...
In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few deca... more In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few decades, tone is the only prosodic feature in Yoruba that has received considerable attention in the field of linguistic research. Intonation, on the other hand, has suffered a near-neglect. All there is to be flagged up in the existing literature on the intonational system of the language are mutual effects of tones on each other. But there is more to Yoruba intonation than such effects. Recent approaches do not facilitate any comparison of Yoruba intonation with that of non-tone languages. The present investigation seeks to give a more sophisticated account of Yoruba intonation. Drawing on universal traits of intonation across languages, I report, in this paper, some of the new findings of a new elicitation study on the nature of Yoruba intonation. Acoustic analysis of the Fo patterns in some spoken Yoruba sentences in the following categories: declarative and three types of interrogative ...
Studies in English Language Teaching
A number of studies on Nigerian English intonation, of which sentence stress is a part, reveal th... more A number of studies on Nigerian English intonation, of which sentence stress is a part, reveal that Nigerian English is devoid of accentuation; it is generally spoken with tone. Even at that, none of these studies has analyzed how teachers of English in Nigeria articulate or utilize sentence stress in speech, whether consciously or unconsciously. This present study focuses, therefore, on the performance of secondary school English teachers in the use of sentence stress for effective communication. Analysis of 24 (12 short and 12 long) elicited English sentences uttered by 32 secondary school English teachers in Lagos State of Nigeria reveal a performance of only 27% correct accentuation and 73% incorrect accentuation. The study concludes that secondary school teachers of English in Nigeria have not adequately mastered the art of accenting the right words in sentences to accurately generate the intended meaning. Finally, the study recommends that intensive trainings be organized for ...
English Language and Literature Studies
Personal names, in African context, are not arbitrary. They are like signposts that convey a wide... more Personal names, in African context, are not arbitrary. They are like signposts that convey a wide range of invaluable information about the bearers. Also, they are like a ‘social DNA’ that discloses the identity, family background, family history, family vocation and family deity of the bearer (Onadipe, 2012). Sadly however, studies, which are mostly sociolinguistic in perspective, abound to show that some of these given personal names are being anglicized among the younger generation of bearers (Soneye, 2008; Faleye & Adegoju, 2012; Raheem, 2013; Filani & Melefa, 2014). From the standpoint of socio-phonology and using Knobelauch’s (2008) Phonological Awareness as our theoretical framework, this paper investigates the phonological changes that Yoruba personal names undergo when they are anglicized; and their implication for the endangerment of Yoruba language. Perceptual and acoustic analyses of the data sourced from the written and verbalized (as well as recorded)...
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
This paper is an investigation of the pronunciation patterns of English interdental fricatives by... more This paper is an investigation of the pronunciation patterns of English interdental fricatives by some Yoruba speakers of English at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. This was with a view to finding out the extent to which gender, the level of education, and the position in words of the interdental fricatives (i.e., the (th) variable as in think, pathetic, and path on the one hand, and the (dh) variable as in then, father, and clothe on the other hand) could affect the realisations of these two fricatives, otherwise known as (th) and (dh) variables. Data eventually used for this study were drawn from the reading performance of thirty-three informants who were of Yoruba origin. The thirty-three informants comprised 20 male and 13 female subjects with different levels of education ranging from undergraduate to doctoral. Our findings indicated that the (dh) variable was significantly affected by gender while the (th) variable was not. It was also demonstrated that while the (t...
In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few deca... more In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few decades, tone 1 is the only prosodic feature in Yoruba that has received considerable attention in the field of linguistic research. Intonation2, on the other hand, has suffered a near-neglect. All there is to be flagged up in the existing literature on the